The Effects of Positive Parental Involvement on Third Grade Students Math Success - Research Proposal Example

The Effects of Positive Parental Involvement on Third Grade Math Success Grade (March 10, Action Research outline Write-up • Abstract • Area of Focus Statement • Introduction • Research question • Confidentiality, Anonymity and protection of participants • Literature Review • Data collection techniques • Data Collection, Data Sources, Data Analysis and Interpretation • References 1. Abstract The purpose of this action research is to investigate the effect of parental involvement on the performance of math for third grade children. Interview, observation and literature review will be applied as data collection techniques. Regression and correlation analysis will act as the data analysis and interpretation techniques. 2. Area of Focus Statement Parental involvement improves student performance in a variety of ways. How can parental involvement improve third-graders performance in math? 3. Introduction Parental involvement has been found to be vital for influencing students’ academic success. However, even though parents accept the relevance of parental involvement, they are yet to show full commitment and implementation. 4. Research question What are the effects of positive parental involvement on third grade student’s math success? 5. Confidentiality, Anonymity and protection of participants The confidentiality of the participants will be achieved through using codes for the participants, as opposed to their real names. Informed consent and the right to withhold information for the participants will ensure their privacy is not harmed. 6. Literature Review Working together for parents and teachers, especially in homework assignments, could raise the level of student motivation and performance. The understanding of what students are learning by their parent can help the parents to avail the right home learning environment for the children, while also providing them support with the required necessary materials. 7. Data collection techniques Interview, observation and literature review serve as the data collection techniques for this study. The validity, reliability and generalizability will be enhanced through collecting data directly from the parents and teachers involved with the third grade children. General parental involvement/intervention strategies will be applied, while general home and classroom settings will be applied o enhance the inference and generalization of the study outcome to the whole population. 8. Data Collection, Data Sources, Data Analysis and Interpretation Parents, teachers and relevant literature will serve as the data sources for this action research. Correlation analysis will be applied to analyze the data and establish the nature of relationship existing between parental involvement and children performance variables. Regression analysis will establish the strength and direction of the relationship between the two variables. 9. References The Effects of Positive Parental Involvement on Third Grade Students Math Success Abstract The issue of parental involvement in the lives of their children has been studied since the 1980s. The results of the studies are consistent, showing that parental involvement is vital for enhancing children’s academic performance. The State government, communities and local schools are playing their role in enhancing the performance of students at school. However, the parents have yet to play their roles in supporting their children’s performance effectively, despite expecting the education system to prepare their children for a rewarding future life. The purpose of this action research is to investigate the effect of parental involvement on the performance of math for third grade children. Interview, observation and literature review will be applied as data collection techniques. Regression and correlation analysis will act as the data analysis and interpretation techniques. 1: Area of Focus Statement, Research Question, and Introduction Area of Focus Statement The issue of parental involvement in their children’s educational lives has gained more importance since the 1980s (Weisburd, 2005). Thus, the three decades of research into this area have shown that parental involvement in the education of their children significantly improves, and in a variety of ways, the outcomes related to the learning and other school related activities (Masseth, 2007). In this respect, there exists sufficient evidence to conclude that the involvement of parents/families in the education of their children is important. However, the specific focus of this study will be on how the involvement of the parents can influence the success of Third Grade Students in Math. Introduction The involvement of parents in the education of their children in one way or the other has been the subject of various studies over the past three decades (Cotton & Wikelund, 1989). The studies have delved deeply in establishing the influence that the parental involvement has on the success of their children. Despite the fact that the nature and structure of families have changed fairly over the past three decades, while the environment in which the school operate has also transformed to a greater extent, the findings of these studies have remained constant (Battle-Bailey, 2003). Thus, parents have increasingly shown increased levels of acceptance of the relevance of parental involvement in the lives of their children. However, the parental acceptance of the need to get involved in their children’s educational lives does not always translate into commitment and implementation of this objective (Mills, 2014). Thus, much still remains to be done, in order for the parental involvement to translate into enhanced learning experience for the children. Research Question What are the effects of positive parental involvement on third grade student’s math success? 2: Confidentiality, Anonymity and protection of participants 1. How will you ensure confidentiality, anonymity, and avoidance of harm of your participants? The confidentiality and anonymity of the participants to this study will be guaranteed through the coding of the participants in numbers, as opposed to using their own names. This will serve to ensure that their real identities cannot be disclosed. 2. Outline actions taken for each area Privacy The privacy of the participants will also be enhanced through applying the informed consent in the access and use of any form of information that is related to the participants to the study. The information used in the results analysis will only be that which the individual participants have consented to, while the participants will retain the rights to withhold any form of information they might deem intrusive to their personal lives. Therefore, the participants will be required to give informed consent at every stage of the research process, including in the collection, disclosure and /or use of information. Confidentiality The confidentiality of the information related to the participants will be ensured through the limitation of the access, modification, use or disclosure of information to the researcher only. Integrity To enhance the integrity of the research process, the data and information collected from the participants will just be used and reported in its authentic form, without being modified to suit any interests. 3. What steps will you use to accurately record data? The accuracy of the data will be recorded through applying various steps: Timely recording of information First, the accuracy of the data will be ensured, through making sure to record all the information in good time. This will avert any postponement of recording the information gathered to a later date, which would have the effect of tampering with the accuracy of the information, since some details might be forgotten. Clarification of the source of data The clarity of the source of data is another step that will be undertaken to ensure that the data collected is accurate. The importance of clarifying the source of data is to ensure that the data collected is not mixed up. The mixing up of data from different sources can result in inaccuracy in the reporting of the data (Leedy & Ormrod, 2001). Careful consideration of challenges to accuracy of the data The accuracy of the data is highly dependent on the authenticity of the data source. In this respect, the accuracy of the data collected from research participants would be highly dependent on the mood, state of mind and voluntary willingness of the participants to divulge such information. Thus, these factors that can likely challenge the accuracy of information will be considered and overcome, through ensuring that only information that is not interfered by such factors will be admitted to the research. Updating the information The last step that will be involved in ensuring the accuracy of the recorded data will be updating the information and data collected regularly. The participants to the study may not be well prepared to divulge full information the first time they are interviewed, but they can give elaborate and comprehensive information later. Thus, through updating the information with the most recent one, the accuracy of the information generated from the participants will be enhanced. 3. Data collection techniques The action research to establish the effect of positive parental involvement on third grade student’s math success will entail the active participation of the researcher in the creation of solution to inadequate parental involvement, through devising different strategies and interventions for involvement. Simultaneously, the researcher will be conducting research on how effective the interventions and parental involvement strategies are, in enhancing math success for the third Grade children. (1) Describe data collection techniques you will use to answer each of your research questions The data collection techniques that will be applied in this research study will be a combination of both interviews and observation. Interviews A face-to-face interview with parents who are participants in this research will be undertaken, to establish the level of involvement of the parents in the education lives of their third grade children, their involvement strategies/interventions and how the involvement has influenced the success of their children in math. Through action research methodology, different methods of parental involvement in their third grade children math will be proposed, after which the data on the effect of the implementation of the interventions will be collected through interviewing the parents. The choice of interview as one of the data collection techniques for this study is informed by the fact that interview is the data collection technique that yields the highest response rates (Leedy & Ormrod, 2001). In addition, interview has been selected as a data collection technique, due to the fact that it is a data collection technique that allows the researcher to clarify on ambiguous answers, and also allows for the researcher to seek appropriate follow-ups when it is necessary (Leedy & Ormrod, 2001). Observation Observation is yet another data collection technique that will be applied in this action research. The data collection through the observation technique will entail monitoring the school records of the third grade participants’ math performance throughout the period of the research. The participatory observation will also entail joining a third grade math class and observing the behavior, response and conduct of the participant third-graders in the research, to establish their improvement or lack of it, in understanding and performing math instructions. The choice of observation as a method of data collection for this action research is informed by the fact that; observation allows for the accurate monitoring of the target behavior (Leedy & Ormrod, 2001). Relevant Literature Review Literature review is a data collection strategy that will be applied under this study, to generate more data and information that can both complement and supplement the primary data and information collected through both interview and observation data collection techniques. Further, though literatures review data collection technique, more data that can be easily generalized and applied as an inference to the general population will be acquired. 2. Describe how you have addressed the issues of validity, reliability and generalizability in your action research inquiry Validity The validity of the data collection method is ensured, since the data for this action research will be collected both from the parents and the teachers of third grade students. Therefore, this data will be valid, owing to the fact that both the parents and the teachers have the authority to speak to the subject of math performance by the students. Further, the collection of data will only be limited to the parents with current third grade children, as well as teachers who specifically teach math to the third grade students. Reliability The reliability of the data collected will be ensured, since the source of data are the parents and teachers, who are the parties directly involved in the implementation of the research action under inquiry. This means that the information that such participants offer as a contribution to the action research is dependable, since they are the parties who are directly involved with the third-graders. ` Generalizability The generalizability of the study is also ensured by the fact that the action research data is gathered directly from the teachers, parents and also from the students through participatory observation of their behaviors in the classroom setting. This therefore means that the data can easily be generalized to similar settings and circumstances. The parental involvement strategies and interventions that will be devised for practical experimentation with the third-graders are generally applicable interventions that any parent with a third grade child can apply at home. The interventions will not be targeted for particular settings, but rather for general home and school settings application. This way, the outcome of the study can easily be generalized to the entire population of parents with third grade children taking math. 4. Review of Related Literature Since the establishment of the first schools, teachers have always given their students some homework. This practice may have been established in order to build practice, make the children better prepared and also instill responsibility into them. However, there was a good reason for this extra-school work being referred as homework (Cooper & Jackson, 2001). The establishment of the practice of giving students homework was meant to cultivate the involvement of parents with their children, to promote academic success. The first legal recognition of the need for the parental involvement in the educational lives of their children came in 1994, when the Goals 2000 legislation was enacted and dedicated to this objective, requiring that every school will increase parental involvement and participation (Epstein & Bursuck, 2001). This objective was also found to be vital for the success of children in their education, and subsequently reaffirmed in 1997, when the National PTA designed and formulated the six National Standards for Parent/Family Involvement Programs for USA schools (Carter, 2002). Thus, towards the end of the twentieth century and progressing into the twenty-first century, states have increasingly been involved in monitoring and maintaining these six standards for parent/family involvement within their jurisdictions, to ensure that parents continue to engage with the educational lives of their children at all levels (Carter, 2002). On the other hand, the communities are increasingly becoming interested in monitoring the cost of education to the society, and designing measures that can mitigate the negative effects, and enhance the positive effects of education (Kyriakides, 2005). The local schools on their side are continuously devising for ways to improve the quality of education they are giving to their students, even amidst shortage of required resources. Thus, the only stakeholder remaining without strictly showing full commitments towards enhancing the success and positive effect of education on the students are the parents. The major concerns that parents have is getting assurance that their children will be prepared adequately through education, to be able to lead rewarding lives in the future (Pena, 2000). 5. Data Collection, Data Sources, Data Analysis and Interpretation Data Collection Data Collection for this action research will be undertaken through the use of both interview and participatory observation data collection techniques. Interviews will be applied to collect data related to the strategies and interventions that are applied by parents with third grade children to get involved in their education, more particularly in math. In addition, interview will be used as a data collection technique for gathering information from teachers on the most suitable, applicable and effective parental involvement /intervention strategies in third-graders math. On the other hand, observation will be applied as a data collection technique for gathering data related to the behavior, conduct and response of the third grade math students to math instructions within a classroom setting. Data Sources Parents and teachers of the third grade math children will act as the participants and the source of data for this action research. The parents and teachers are selected as the data sources for this research, since they are the parties directly involved with the third grade children undertaking math, thus they are able to authoritatively divulge information related to the research action questions. Relevant Literature The action research also seeks to gather the relevant data related to the study from the applicable sources of literature such as books, articles, research studies and government reports on the subject of parental involvement in children education, its importance and the most suitable and applicable interventions and strategies. The literature sources will complement the primary data collected directly from the participant teachers and parents, for the sake of making the outcome of the study more generalized. Data Analysis and Interpretation The data analysis and interpretation techniques that will be applied under this action research are the correlation and regression analysis techniques. This action research seeks to establish the effect of the parental involvement on the performance of the third grade children in math. Thus, the action research seeks to establish the relationship between parental involvement and the children performance in math. Therefore a correlation analysis is suitable for this study, since it will help define the correlation coefficient between parental involvement and children performance in math. This way, it will define the nature of the relationship existing between these two variables. On the other hand, a regression analysis is important for this study, since it will help define both the strength and the direction of the relationship between the parental involvement variable and the third grade children performance in math variable. References Battle-Bailey, L. (2003). Training teachers to design interactive homework. Washington, D.C.: Clearinghouse on Teacher and Teacher Education. Carter, S. (2002). The Impact of Parent / Family Involvement on Student Outcomes: An Annotated Bibliography of Research from the Past Decade. U.S. Office of Special Education Program. 1-32. Cooper, H., & Jackson, K. (2001). A model of homeworks influence on the performance evaluations of elementary school students. Journal of Experimental Education, 69 (2), 1 8 1- 1 89. Cotton, K. & Wikelund, K. (1989). Parent Involvement in Education. School Improvement Research Series 6, 1-15. Epstein. M. & Bursuck, W. (2001). Homework Communication Problems: Perspectives of Special and General Education Parents. Reading and Writing Quarterly17 (3), 1 8 1 -187. Kyriakides, L. (2005). Evaluating school policy on parents working with their children in class. The Journal of Educational Research, 98(5), 28 1 - 294. Leedy, P. D., & Ormrod, J. E. (2001). Practical research: Planning and design. Upper Saddle River, NJ [u.a.: Merrill Prentice Hall. Masseth, S. L. (2007). Parental Involvement with Homework and Third Grade Student Achievement Education and Human Development Masters Theses Paper 444. Mills, G. E. (2014). Action research: A guide for the teacher researcher (5th edition). NY: Pearson Education. Pena, D. (2000). Parent involvement: Influencing factors and implications. The Journal of Educational Research, 94(1), 42- 54. Weisburd, C. (2005). Academics after-school style: Informal, experiential approaches to learning, with flexibility built in, are ideal. School Administrator, 62(5), 22. Read More